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Friday, July 13, 2007

The angry "left"

We all know this meme. The unhinged "left" blogsophere is full of nothing but anger and vitriol. And uses foul language. You know what I have to say to that?

You're god damn right I'm angry. And if being critical of the Bush administration is now what the word "left" connotates .... fine I'm "left" and just about every sane person in the world should be "left".

What am I so angry (actually, not angry - furious, irate, livid, indignant, etc - are words that better describe my mood) about? For 6 years, this administration and its cheerleaders in the noise machine have questioned the patriotism of anyone who did not blindly accept nearly every aspect of its so called "war on terror." Michelle Malkin says that we are ostriches putting our heads in the sand, pretending that there is no terrorist threat. In 2004, Neil Boortz openly wondered who was more dangerous: al Qaeda or John Kerry voters. Karl Rove has told us that Democrats want to appease terrorists. Ann Coulter has said that "liberals" are treasonous by nature, and Dinesh D'Souza has called "the cultural left" the "enemy at home." Rush Limbaugh has declared that Democrats are at war with America. Bill O'Reilly says that the "s-p" media wants us to lose in Iraq, and Malkin and co. have accused at one point or another pretty much every non-noise machine agent of the media to be guilty of treason. [Blogger's Edit - And Charles Krauthammer, columnist for - in the words of Michelle Malkin - the "Pulitzer for Treason" Washington Post "diagnosed" Bush critics as being mentally deranged.]

When we object to the President illegally spying on US citizens we are accused of not wanting to pursue the terrorists. When we complain about our leaders authorizing torture and abandoning the human rights standards that the USA helped champion after WWII in order to prevent the horrors of the Holocaust from ever happening again we are told we hate America.

President Bush says repeatedly that anyone who questions him is either not serious about terrorism or is playing partisan politics or both.

Et cetera.

You know what I have to say to that? Fuck you. Every single one of you rotten miserable cretins that have defended this terrible administration tooth-and-nail while demonizing your fellow Americans as traitors within.

Now we have a report that has come out saying that al Qaeda is back to pre-9/11 strength levels. You're god damned right I'm angry. I've been betrayed. This nation has been betrayed. With unprecedented approval ratings after 9/11, President Bush embarked on a purely partisan political campaign to use the attacks to consolidate power for the conservative movement and to achieve the ideological goals of the PNAC crowd that has designed his foreign policy.

Six years after the attack and what do we have to show for it?

We've had our freedoms and liberties reduced. The nation's moral authority has been obliterated by this administration's abandoment of international law and by the creation of a concentration camp in Cuba and a gulag prison system in Europe, in addition to torture within our prisons and out-sourced tortrue to countries such as Egypt, Syria, and Uzbekistan (notorious for having boiled a prisoner alive.)

The nation has been bankrupted by the President's tax cuts for the rich and ever increasing requests for ever larger military budgets ... budgets that don't help us fight terrorism but do feed the military-industrial complex and defense contractors that seem to be running the country.

We've have our army stretched and broken in an intractable conflict in Iraq that the administration DELIBERATELY failed to plan for. That same conflict has turned a country that did not harbor terrorists before our invasion into the global center of terrrorist activity. And since the invasion global terrorist activity has increased.

Muslim anti-American sentiment has increased. Billions of dollars have been lost to no bid and cost plus contracts to the war profiteering friends of the administration.

The fossil fuel industry was allowed to write our nation's energy policy in secret at the same time that it was manipulating the market in California causing an energy crisis in the process.

Our environment and our health have been given away to the corporate backers of this administration that paid for the President's election [another edit - and our health (and large segments of the rest of the world have also been sacrificed to the magical thinking of the President's religious right constituency.)]

We've had the country brought to the edge of a Constitutional crisis by a President who asserts that he is not bound by the law - that Article II of the US Constitution is in actuallity Article 48 of the Weimar Republic's Constitution (the one that was invoked to make Hitler dictator), except unlike Article 48, the President need not seek the approval of Congress to activate his emperor/dictator powers ... he need only assert he perceives a threat to national security.

We've had the open society necessary for democracy to exist rolled back by the most secretive administration in US history, an administration that intends to keep its actions hidden, and forever.

Our Coast Guard is less prepared to deal with terrorism now than it was before 9/11. The administration - the one that invoked the specter of 9/11 for virtually every action that it has taken - refused to endorse the Nunn-Lugar legislation that would have helped secure loose nuclear material in the former Soviet Union.

Nuclear proliferation has increased as the United States has itself abandoned international treaties and has adopted a first strike nuclear option policy, and rewarded nations that proliferate arms - such as Israel, Pakistan, and India - with military aid and support. [me again - And when Iran in 2002 made a diplomatic offer to the United States in regards to NOT developing nuclear weapons which, in the analysis of nuclear expert Graham Allison, looked much like exactly the sort of thing we would have wanted from an agreement with Iran, the Bush administration rejected the proposal prima facie as absurd.]

By being determined to militarize space the administration has almost guaranteed that we will be entering into a new arms race with China and Russia.

We are left with a world more lawless, more dangerous. And for what? For what?

Al Qaeda is back to its pre 9/11 strength levels!!! My patriotism was questioned. My loyalty to this nation was questioned. I was called unhinged. "Leftist". "Moonbat." Part of a "domestic insurgency." And so were millions of other Americans.

And for what? At the end of the day, what has this administration done for this nation other than ruin it. Chipping away at democracy piece by piece with its political litmus tests for appointments, with its faith-based 1st amendment eroding money laundering scheme designed by Karl Rove to pay the Religious Right to vote Republican. Politicizing every single action that has been taken while simultaneously accusing everyone else of playing "partisan politics."

And how did President Bush respond to the report? He denied it. Denied its reality. How many times have we been lied to? How many times .. how much bullshit have we been fed? Its an insult. Its degrading for this man ... this serial truth distorter to keep bullshitting this nation.

George W. Bush is the reason that the founding fathers put impeachment in the Constitution.

The question isn't who is angry and why, but who isn't angry, and why the hell aren't they?

8 comments:

I used to be angry, but I found it wearing, because there are so many to be angry at for the current mess.

Being angry at Cheney, Bush, or Rove for poisoning the political arena is like being angry at bats for carrying rabies.

I'd like to, but I just can't sustain anger at the 50 percent of the 55.3 percent in 2004 or 51 percent in 2000 who voted for Bush. I have a neighbor who looks and acts so much like Dick Cheney that it's frightening, and I'm morally certain he voted for his lookalike (and would again, even now), and I've found it easier to just pretend he doesn't exist than to be angry at him.

Another neighbor who voted GOP -- and still will -- isn't a bad sort, and I can't really remain angry. It would be like being angry at a dog.

I was angry for a while at the Supreme Court, and even at Al Gore, but on reflection I've realized that being angry at the SC is like being angry with God, a totally destructive anger, whether there's a God or not, and I've forgiven Al.

It's not that I'm a nice person, don't misunderstand. If somebody has the effrontery to support this administration in my presence I wait my chance and make the most cutting and sarcastic comment I can manage, then smile sardonically and walk away. I rarely get the chance these days, and I have a whole slew of sarcastic remarks going begging as a result.

I especially relish the opportunity when somebody, like a farmer or other disadvantaged individual whines about the way things are going, because I get to say things like "you should have sold your Enron when I did." or "You're in the wrong business. DoD contracting, now that's hot." or "Maybe Toyota will bring out a hybrid tractor soon."

The right-wingers I know have started avoiding me for some reason, which has improved my life immeasurably. They even stopped sending me email garbage from their right-wing mailing lists after I apologetically explained that, for reasons inexplicable, my email client sends them straight to garbage, and that, although I could probably fix this, I decided to just leave it that way.

It's not very nice, I know, but it's much more fun -- for me -- than anger.

"There is but one thing of true value; to cultivate truth and justice, and to live without anger in the midst of lying and unjust men." - Marcus Aurelius

I still think that is a great credo to live by, but I also agree with David Hume that reason decoupled from the pasions leaves a person without an animating direction.

My anger and indignation expressed in this post are very much a product of a moment in time: specifically, me hearing the news of the al Qaeda having regrouped to 9/11 levels.

I'm not going to be living in a perpetual state of outrage (although this is feasible given the near constant flow of outrages that stem from this administration) but will now employ reason (to the extent that I can) to address what it is that made me angry in the first place.

People should get mad. Then they should stop being mad and start thinking about what we can do to save democracy.

Always keep in mind that, while ol' Marcus was a relatively enlightened soul, he was also the absolute ruler of Rome. Being able to have any lying, unjust SOB sent to the barbarian frontier or just disappeared would go a long way in removing the suffering involved in putting up with this class of citizen.

Maybe that's a part of what makes Bush so strangely cheerful.

I feel more disgust and distrust than anger. A good shower and the ability to sleep in on Saturday without knowing I'll probably wake up to some further insanity, perpetrated by the WH late Friday night, will go a long way to helping my outlook.

Yeah it so funny that these right wingers criticize us for being angry. When you have watched your goverment squander billions of dollars in a failed war, based on lies, and that should of not been started in the first place, it kind of get under your skin.

I remember in the months before the Iraq invasion seeing a poster depicting Osama bin Laden in an Uncle Sam like pose. It said "I want you to invade Iraq". I thought, yep, this whole thing is going to play right into Al Qaeda's hands.

I remember arguing with someone on a email list that if we invade Iraq, then we, the U.S. anyway, will be bogged down fighting an insurgency. I based this not on years of classes on the Middle East, or political science or anything like that. I based it on a relatively superficial knowledge of history from which I inferred that people will not put up with a foriegn occupier. They will fight back, regardless of whether you deposed a tyrant of not.

Few of us have ever said we should not fight or confront the terrorists, I am no pacifist. I was always of the position that you have fight them smart. Now as we see, those fanatics hiding in caves or the mountains of Pakistan outsmarted our "leadership". Not that they really did anything, they just let the arrogant powerful trip over their own arrogance. Pathetic. I only hope that the Democrats can have enough back bone to stand up and make things right.